Me on my elephant safari - you can also see my Swiss friend Christina who is facing the camera behind me. I met her on our canoe ride in the morning and we just happened to be on the same elephant ride as well. She's been traveling for months and months now. Did a tour of Europe then more recently spent 3 months in India but she'll be returning home to find a job this weekend.
Here is one of the bull elephants at the breeding center outside Royal Chitwan National Park. After I arrived on Monday afternoon I went to the visitors center then over here to see some of the elephants and briefly walked through the edge of the jungle before settling by the river that marks the park boundary. 
Here is the sunset over the park. The dugout canoes seen in the picture are what we took about 5km down the river the next morning to view the wildlife. Following the canoe ride I got out and had a guide that took me on a jungle walk. We saw lots of crocodiles and many evidences of other animals but didn't actually run into any of them.
A waterlilly of sorts that populate the river and float along in it
One of the 2 types of crocodiles they have. This one resembles and alligator with the longer snout. It eats only fish.
The other crocodile species is "much more aggressive" and will eat just about anything. Seeing at this guy was only 12 or 15 feet long I figured he'd probably start to get full by the time he got to my torso.
After the jungle walk I went by the river where they daily have "elephant bathing" and let the tourist get in the water with them. The elephants play, let people ride them, buck them off into the water, and spray them.
I think this picture actually happened first. We went and got on the elephant and at the last minute before he stood up this German fellow in quite a nice speedo decided to join me. Unfortunately, he didn't situate himself quite right and mauled me in order to stay on the elephant nearly causing us both to plunge into the water and providing quite the entertainment for the onlookers.
Here is another photo of the elephant safari. This is a different group. Turns out our elephant was giant - they all are but ours towered above the rest by at least a meter or more. It was a fun although bumpy ride. We saw some spotted deer and a wild boar in addition to the rhinos shown below. 
Mother and baby rhino
2 comments:
aaaaaaggggghhhhh. Great shots Jason. Amazing. It looked like such a fun time. I did enjoy the pics of the dripping wet men holding onto you so tightly. haha. Such a neat experience (the animals, not the men). :-)
I must admit I'm kinda jealous I didn't grow up in Europe now. Free education. Month long travels to experience the world. We American's really don't have our priorities straight, do we?
Jason, ha ha ha! Your description of the "German fellow in quite a nice speedo" is hilarious. Wish I could have seen your face when he jumped on behind you :-)
Looks like you are getting to experience some amazing things...thanks for keeping us updated!
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